Hurricane Harvey was one for the books. Record rainfall, record flooding. A real nightmare. Heavy rain for days on end with no stop. Hopefully something that doesn't occur for another 800 years or so.

Some will recover in days, some weeks or months. Others will take years to come back from such a disaster. The Gulf coast as a whole will certainly take years to recover both structurally and economically. But recover it will. Life will go on. For now we pull Sheetrock and flooring. Drag 400 pound water logged mattresses to the curb. Stack washer, dryer, refrigerator, and couches next to the mounds of clothes and toiletries. Desks, dressers, night stands, coffee table. Many lost everything they owned. Few lost even their lives.

Alvin was lucky. Juxtaposed some twenty miles south of Houston we got nearly the same rainfall. Parts of town had water 8 feet deep. Yet a large portion of town didn't flood at all. At the school we had water rise within just a few feet of the building. Many new roof leaks spring up from the immense weight of water pounding down on the roof for days on end. Disintegrated ceiling tiles strewn about and water logged insulation. I was there numerous times adding buckets to catch the water. Still, many gallons of water ran through. We were lucky. Everything is dried out now and class will be moving back inside next week. Training will resume its normal schedule.

Unfortunately, due to the severe damage to the Lenard E. Merrel Center one month before tournement, it has been cancelled. Next year is the 60th anniversary of Kuk Sool Won and the world championship in Houston. It will be a tournament to look forward to.

I am very happy about the start of classes this year. Great new things are in the works and loads of new people are discovering what Kuk Sool Won has to offer. We updated lots of equipment and have a tumbling strip now along with lots of other fun stuff. I look forward to what this year has to offer for Kuk Sool Won of Alvin and it's students.

SBN Wes was out this past Thursday so we decided to forgo techniques to work jump kicks and target kicks. It is important to practice kicks at full force to learn more control and develop more power. It also gives one a chance to learn distancing and balance recovery. We also practiced sparring drills and put our newly learned skills to action with free sparring against an instructor. Hopefully we can do something fun this week to keeps those skills fresh!